Rainy Day Games
by Tabi
Summary: Koizumi visits her apartment a lot more often, these days.


Koizumi knew that there were certain places he could go if he didn't want to be disturbed; his own house was rarely, however, on this list. His family knew he had a part-time job but they didn't have to know the details (and the Organisation gave him enough to cover up his activities in the first place). Late at night, there lay the possibility of somebody coming into his bedroom to find him still on his computer typing up reports - but again, he had plausible deniability when it came to such things. Schoolwork, homework, yes perhaps he _should_ be getting a good night's sleep, but wasn't he studious? Wasn't he dedicated?

Sometimes he would lie (because he couldn't help or stop himself) and say that he was going to a friend's house to study. They'd smile and repeat those platitudes. Part of him would consider this a half-lie, just for a moment, but then he'd really think it over and realise that neither part of the statement held up to any sort of scrutiny; the geographical element was as much as he could lay claim to.

There is Kyon's house, but there is little he feels can be done there. Little enough he could tell Kyon himself about, although that seemed to change day by day. Nonetheless, Kyon was _normal_ and his family was _normal_ and they would probably appreciate their _entirely normal _son having study sessions with such an apparently model student, but that was never Koizumi's true intent. There was Nagato's apartment and Koizumi wasn't sure he couldn't convince himself that wouldn't be the best place - he found Nagato herself somewhat difficult to talk to, but she had proved her loyalty to the SOS Brigade and was certainly on their side even if the Data Integration Thought Entity itself sat more ambiguous. Her apartment lay sparse, but he felt that she would probably allow him to stay if he asked - and he could likely get a reliable internet connection there, if nothing else.

Koizumi wonders, sometimes, just how Kyon would react were he to know of the times Koizumi spent at the delightful Asahina-san's apartment. Too simple and too complex both at once; he knew it would do Asahina no favours for her to admit her behaviour and he, too, had no desire to anger or alienate Kyon at this point in time. And so he would go to her place, laptop in hand, wireless connectivity quietly switched off. He could write reports at hers, he didn't have to _send_ them. Did she even have the power to intercept such things? He didn't know, and knew that there was a lot that he didn't know about _her_ and _her people_. Sat into the corner of her sofa he would think of this and smile - '_her people_', as if they were some other species. Surely, Kyon aside, she was the most normal of their group? She just happened to come from the future, that was all. She wasn't some theoretical god or alien computer or psychic combatant, she was just... someone they'd sent back in time, someone to keep watch, someone stationed at this outpost of a timeline and able to only do her best and no better. She would smile and bring tea through, keeping it away from his laptop, and he would compliment her and drink the tea and suspect her more and more. Perhaps he was simply setting himself up for a trap. What would it take for her to add something to the tea, for him to wake up captured as some pawn in continuing conflict between the Espers and the Time Travellers...?

They've talked about that before. Jokingly. 'Jokingly'. She smiles and, with the same tone of voice as would dictate the choice of cake to go alongside the tea, tells him that in the grand scheme of things, he really isn't _that_ important. Doing anything untoward held the risk of disturbing Suzumiya, and her demands lay as priority in this case. "_Luckily for you,_" she'd smile.

"_It would seem that I owe Suzumiya-san a great deal, then._" He'd raise his tea, as if to toast her. "_I hope I get the chance to thank her sincerely, one day._"

"_Koizumi-kun, getting the chance to be sincere?_" A giggle. "_I hope I get to see that, too._"

Strangely, Koizumi finds himself appreciating the fact that the two of them can make those sorts of comments at one another. Her role in the group is well-practiced, but they're not in the group here, now. He knows himself in a similar position; he worries himself, sometimes, with how easily it comes for him to fall to deference under Suzumiya's command. This _is_ for the higher purpose, of course it is, but it seems to take less and less effort as time goes by. He wouldn't have been selected had it not been for certain strengths in the required areas, but even so. His duty, as a member of the Organisation, is to display as unthreatening a front as possible, to Suzumiya and Kyon both. The smile comes to him so easily, now. He's tempted to think '_it comes naturally_' but it's not that, it's never _been_ that. It comes easily and he needs it and that's the most important thing. He can worry about the psychological after-effects of constantly assuming the subservient role once he has nothing else to worry about, but the Organisation monitors his physical and mental health quite regularly and he supposes, really, it has become the job of other people to worry about how and if he's fit for purpose. He can't question it. If the Organisation did, then he wouldn't have the chance to. There, he supposed, lay some sort of safety net. _As long as I'm here, I'm permitted to be here._ Thinking on it further was simply an exercise in needless theoreticals.

If it were the clubroom then likely she would stand to the side (in that maid's outfit) waiting on them all, but here she takes the seat opposite Koizumi and sits back against the cushions to watch him working, because it's her apartment and she's allowed to do that, here.

"_Maybe you're a masochist, Koizumi-kun...!_" (He glances up and keeps steady eye-contact, vaguely encouraging her to continue.) "_Maybe that's why you were chosen for this. Don't you think?_"

He closes the laptop (locked and under several layers of passwords) and puts it to one side, stretching out and then relaxing, netting his fingers together and giving her his full attention. "_Well now, if we're going down that route of 'slightly demeaning accusations of personality traits that meant we got picked for this job', where do I start with you, Asahina-san...? I'm sure you're not as helpless as you like to seem but oh, you certainly like to seem so...!_"

"_It is rather naughty, isn't it? Kyon-kun's so... interesting. Predictable and unpredictable both at once. We can't map him to any chart, but he can be quite oblivious to his weaknesses sometimes... luckily for me._"

"_You could really get him into trouble, couldn't you? If you wanted._"

"_If I wanted._"

These times in her apartment feel like the only times he doesn't - _they don't_ - have to hide their adversity to one another. He wonders how it is that that fact in itself became some measure of solidarity between them. All it would take would be an emergency command from the Organisation or something similar from her own faction, but-... that could be dealt with, he thinks, should the situation arise. Perhaps it might never, and he can enjoy the sensation of walking on enemy lines alongside a cup of her perfectly-brewed tea for as long as the two of them feel like such fraternisation.

Sometimes she sits and stares out of the window. "_... Do you think that Nagato-san ever feels lonely?_"

"_I honestly can't even begin to imagine what her emotional capacity is, or isn't._"

"_Hm._"

"_Why do you ask?_"

"... _I was just wondering, that's all. Thinking out loud._"

Koizumi thinks this over, sometimes - about how she comes from the future but she's still _human_ and that fact, perhaps, only confirms the fact further. _Does_ Nagato feel loneliness...? Perhaps. Perhaps she wasn't programmed to do so, but as time goes on it seems she does more and more that one would have expected her to be programmed against. Should he think of her as human or computer? She's certainly alien. (_An alien gently breaking all her known programming due to the interference of a perfectly normal human._ He's been asked to keep his eye on her as well, not that the Organisation has much protection against the Data Integration Thought Entity. _It's almost like scissors-paper-stone_, he thinks. He wonders which is which. He thinks that maybe it isn't like that at all.)

"_Koizumi-kun?_" (She sits by the window again, talking without looking at him.)

"_Mm?_"

"_Can we play a game?_"

He glances up from the laptop. "..._What sort of a game?_"

She has some playing cards and she has an Othello board. He is mildly surprised both at these being in her possession and at her desire to play them; he keeps his reaction subdued, but raises an eyebrow all the same. She holds the Othello box to her chest and fixes him with a stare that he truly believes she doesn't mean to be manipulative. He relents, because why not? It disturbs him how easy those eyes make it to give in to her demands, but for the sake of a board game, it doesn't seem all that dangerous. And there's something about playing board games that he just _likes_ - a simple kind of communication that doesn't rely on anything else, that he can use as common ground whether it's with Kyon or Asahina or anybody. It rains and they play Othello and he is reminded, quite keenly, of similar instances of his youth. A lot has changed since then, but the rules to this have remained the same and will do, Koizumi hopes, for as long as anybody might choose to play. Even Suzumiya Haruhi at her darkest and most destructive would not unconsciously choose to change such a thing, would she? _Perhaps if she lost._ Koizumi resolves not to ask her to play, for the time being. Just in case.

Most of the time, they sit on opposite sides of the room to one another. Sometimes, she will come over to the sofa as well (as she has every right, Koizumi supposes, to do). There can be silence between them, but there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes she'll turn the television on and it's like they're just two people, watching television normally like normal people _do_. It amuses her how the soap operas between this time and hers are barely different; different actors, same everything else. Some things never change. Koizumi wonders just how far in the future she comes from, how many assumptions he can take for granted. She seems to, everything related to their _situation_ aside, behave quite normally. She doesn't seem from so far ahead that her language has changed too dramatically, either. That said, she could simply be an excellent actor - if nothing else, Koizumi believes _this_ of her. There seems nothing unusual in her speech, but for if she happens to say too much enough for everything to become a stream of _classified information, classified information_. He wonders how that works. They are but human beings with mastery of time-travel, and yet they control their representative to the point at which they can control what she says, or doesn't say. Is that her or is it _them_? Mind-control, of whatever type, seems a very different area to time-travel. Are such things possible with hypnotism? Is it something so 'simple', or something he's too far back in the timeline to hope to understand? He knows what the answer would be were he to ask her, and so doesn't bother.

He doesn't know, sometimes, if he's suspicious of _her_ or of _them_. Like Nagato and the Data Integration Thought Entity, could Asahina break _her_ programming? Would she want to? Koizumi isn't sure. He decides that he would remain simply unsure until there lies decisive proof either way, and not bother the thought greatly until then.

She lives alone, and yet has board games. (Perhaps that girl with the green hair might visit, on occasion?) Being human, at the very least, she should have family somewhere. (She moves from the single seat to the sofa and he wonders about this, and about her.) Maybe they haven't been born yet. Perhaps they won't be for quite some time. Are they alive, in the future? Are they waiting for this to end, _all_ of this, and for their daughter to return home safely at the end of it...? That would certainly end her associations with the SOS Brigade. He finds her suspicious, but then thinks on her situation and wonders how many close connections he would genuinely bother making, if he were in her place. Would they allow her to travel in time to her heart's content, or would the end of _this_ close that avenue forever? So too does he wonder if this _would_ ever end, or if they'll be chasing after Suzumiya for the rest of their lives. He can't decide which he would rather, and supposes that if there _were_ a choice to be made, it wouldn't be down to him in the first place. Perhaps it was on a smaller scale, but Suzumiya's decisions were not the only ones that could change the universe.

And so, when Asahina stands by the sofa before sitting down, he doesn't question it. When she sits, but with hesitation. When she closes the distance between the two of them and _looks at him_ and he thinks that, if she were to wear that same expression for Kyon then they'd _all_ be doomed. At the same time, he isn't sure that this is manipulation, either. Perhaps it would shatter Kyon's illusions to be this forward. Perhaps there was worth in keeping him at arm's length, teasing with the lightest suggestion and never implying a thing more than that. Koizumi can't see this as any part of some great plan because, simply, he cannot understand what it is that she would _get_ from all of this. Aside from the obvious, of course; surely the higher-ups at her faction had no need nor requirement for her to do this and if they _did_, well, the thought of _that _future was worse than Koizumi could bring himself to imagine.

The first time, he'd stopped her. Just for a moment. Holding her wrists where she was unbuttoning his shirt, noting the look of surprise on her face when he restrained her. And he smiled, although not the usual smile and indeed, barely one meant in good humour at all - "_Is this your 'practice', Asahina-san...?_"

Her movements were definite but her voice somewhat unsure, "... _'Practice'...?_"

"_I assume I'm not the end target for all of this. But you've said it yourself, haven't you? That I'm not important. Easy practice for the important things._"

She simply pulls her wrists away and continues, "_... It's not like that._"

(He doesn't question her further.)

Perhaps it's one thing or another but she seems both nervous and determined, and so he allows her. More than that - he isn't used to this and she doesn't seem so either and there's something quietly overwhelming in there between _we can do this_ and _we're doing this_ and _we both want this_ (and in that moment, he really does). And he's experienced so many strange things; the concept of Closed Space, of _being an Esper_, every phenomena to do with Suzumiya Haruhi and yet simply being there, on Asahina's sofa with Asahina herself on his lap and _touching_, _moving_, he can understand something of the concept of this driving people to utter, utter distraction. He imagines her trying to seduce Kyon, and wonders how far she would get. She trembles at his touch and his own breath is shaking, and even _this_ is a danger, because who could resist...?

He walked home afterwards, late in the evening as it was. Mind racing. Annoyed with himself for having been so fallible. Reminding himself, over and over, that her faction had just as much animosity towards him as the Organisation did towards somebody such as Asahina, and at the end of everything? She would most likely leave them all. Before that, she'd operate under her own set of commands - _just as we all have to_. What would the Time Travellers think of one of their order who'd slept with an Esper? Koizumi wasn't sure what she had to gain and, indeed, couldn't help but think that she had more to lose than anything else.

Then the weekend was over, and he returned to the clubroom that Monday and came in to find Nagato reading, as usual, and Asahina preparing tea, as usual. She looked up and smiled and greeted him as normal and in that moment was a silent agreement, _not here_. It was just another part of keeping the mask up, wasn't it? Don't let Suzumiya suspect a thing, don't let _anybody else_ suspect a thing. Koizumi isn't sure which possibility is more dangerous. _Don't give either of us the chance to find that out._

They don't stop, though. Koizumi no longer brings his laptop when he visits her apartment, knowing simply that he won't need it.


End file.
